To know Latin America

[Elba]

Dear EC members,

I would like all of you know this continent, which is the owner of a big and intresting culture.
The brown continent is diveded in three parts: North America, Central America and South America. A big percentage of the population speak spanish as a mother tongue and have the chatolicism as a principal beliving -every day there are more and more evangelics-.

Here a little literature about the continent, and I hope you could know what you ignore about latinos.

Latin America was traditionally defined as the regions of the Americas where Spanish, the language of Spain, and Portuguese, the language of Portugal, were spoken. In practice, however, virtually all of the Western Hemisphere except the United States, Canada, and the English-speaking Caribbean nations have tended to come under the heading of Latin America.

From a social-political perspective, including only independent countries, Latin America corresponds roughly to all nations south of the Rio Grande, consisting of Mexico (in North America), most of Central and South America, and the countries of the Caribbean where Spanish, French, Portuguese or Creoles based on those languages are spoken. Following that criteria, Latin America is divided into 20 independent countries and several dependent political units. Brazil is by far the largest country in Latin America both in area and in population. It occupies more than 40 percent of the region's land area and has about a third of its people. Its official language, Portuguese, is not officially spoken in other American countries.

The languages of Spain and Portugal came into being with a blend of Latin and local dialects and so it is this and the need to differenciate between the south of the northern American continent, the United States of America, and the southern continent itself that brought about the term 'Latin America'. The language and peoples of Latin America are not connected to the Latium region of Italy and do not speak the ancient Latin language. Futhermore, many people in Latin America do not speak the official Latin-derived languages, but languages indigenous to the region or languages brought by immigration.

Québec, Acadia and other French-speaking areas in Canada, Louisiana, Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, and other places north of Mexico are traditionally excluded from the Social-political definition of Latin America, despite significant populations speaking a Latin-derived language, because they don't exist as independent states, and/or because they are geographically isolated from the rest of Latin America. French Guiana, however, is usually included, despite being a dependency of France and not an independent country.

The related term Iberoamerica is sometimes used to refer to the nations that were formerly colonies of Spain and Portugal, as these two countries are located on the Iberian peninsula. The Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI) takes this definition a step further, by including Spain and Portugal (often termed the Mother Countries of Latin America) among its member states, in addition to their Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking former colonies in America.

Political Divisions
Latin America is most seen as encompassing the following countries:
Belize, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela

And the following dependencies:

To France
French Guyana
Guadeloupe
Martinique

To the United States
Puerto Rico

Demographics
A large percentage of the people in Latin America are of mixed origins, the result of racial intermingling among European settlers, African slaves, and American natives, with notable exception of the "Southern Cone" ("cono sur": Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, southern Brazil) where the population and the culture is more marked by later European Immigration. Outside of the "Southern Cone", this mixture of backgrounds ("Mestizaje" in Spanish) has profoundly influenced religion, music, and politics, and given rise to a vague identity of those belonging to these mixed cultures; this imprecise cultural heritage is (arguably improperly) called Latinos in American English. Outside of the USA, and in many languages (especially romance ones) "Latino" just means "Latin" (which refers to cultures and peoples that can trace their heritage back to the ancient Roman Empire.)

Language
The Spanish and Portuguese (in the 10 most populated countries), and French (in smaller countries, in the Caribbean, and in French Guiana) languages predominate.

Many Caribbean nations have their own African-influenced Creole versions of these languages. Native American languages are spoken in many Latin American nations, mainly Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala, Bolivia and Mexico.

Religion
The primary religion throughout Latin America is Roman Catholicism, but one can also find practitioners belonging to Protestant, Pentecostal, Evangelical, Mormon, Buddhist, Jewish, Hindu, Bahá'í, indigenous, and various Afro-Latin American traditions, such as Santería, and Macumba.

Music
One of the main characteristics of Latin American music is its diversity; contrarily to a widespread view (especially in the US), there is not one specific Latin American style of music. The so-called "Latin music" covers generally only the Hispano-Caribbean music (salsa, merengue, bachata, etc.), that is to say the styles of music that have been strongly influenced by African rythms and melodies. It is also possible to find completly different styles of music in Latin America, such as the Argentinean tango, Mexican ranchera or the various styles of music from Pre-Columbian traditions that are widespread in the Andean region. In Brazil, samba, American jazz, the European classical music and choro have developped the so-called bossanova music. As concerning the musicology field, classical composer Heitor Villalobos worked on the recording of native musical traditions. His classical works have been heavily influenced by them too.

Recently Latin American music has become more commercial due to a meteoric interest from international markets. A fusion of local rhythms with regular pop music have created Latino Pop, which is still popular in many countries

[MissLT]

Language
The Spanish and Portuguese (in the 10 most populated countries), and French (in smaller countries, in the Caribbean, and in French Guiana) languages predominate.

How much difference between Spanish and Portuguese can you please explain to me? My favorite teacher who teaches Spanish in high school told me that Spanish and Portuguese are different, but they can somehow understand each other. Thus, I wonder about the differences.

[weareok]

Elba, Can I just say, if you meet Dixie in life, then you guys can understand each other very well without a translator? that's pretty cool!

I guess, if I meet you, I have to take a pen and some papers, besides, I guess I also need an electri-dictionary. in that case, I can talk to you by speaking, writing, finger alphabet. I guess that would be definitely work.

[edumelo]

Hello friends,

Well LennyeTran, I think Portuguese and Spanish are different, however, there are many words in both languages that sound very close or are written the same way. For example, the word heart, is corazón (in Spanish) and coração (in Portuguese); the word new is nuevo (in Spanish) and novo (in Portuguese). Also gramatical rules are very close. So, we can often understand each other.


Eduardo, from Brazil.

[Dixie]

Elba, Can I just say, if you meet Dixie in life, then you guys can understand each other very well without a translator? that's pretty cool!

Yes, because we both speak Spanish and English

[Dixie]

Well LennyeTran, I think Portuguese and Spanish are different, however, there are many words in both languages that sound very close or are written the same way. For example, the word heart, is corazón (in Spanish) and coração (in Portuguese); the word new is nuevo (in Spanish) and novo (in Portuguese). Also gramatical rules are very close. So, we can often understand each other.

Of course they are very similar; they both share the same root, Latin. Catalan and Spanish are very similar too, as well as Catalan and French, or Italian. They all are romance languages and share many similarities.

[Elba]

Lenny, as Dixie said spanish and portuguesse are romance languages, then they have the same root, a latin root with similarities in too much words. The pefect example in what Edumelo said about Heart, in spanish Corazón, in Portuguesse "CORA_AO".
I have talked with some people from Brazil, they in their language I´m in spanish and we don´t have big trouble. We understand each other fine, not perfect, not excelent, but we can talk. Both language have the same RYTHM, different from Italian, another Romace Languages, but italians speak fast and with another Rythm.
I send you and articule in order you know a little more about portuguesse, and Thank you very much for your participation.

"Portuguese (Português) is a Romance language predominantly spoken in Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea Bissau, Macao Special Administrative Region of China, Mozambique, Portugal, and São Tomé and Príncipe. Many linguists consider that Portuguese and Galician (the native language of Galicia, Spain) are actually varieties of the same language, but with Galician being strongly influenced by Spanish. With more than 200 million native speakers, Portuguese is one of the few languages spoken in such widely-distributed parts of the world, and is the fifth or sixth most-spoken first language in the world. Because Brazil, with 184 million inhabitants, constitutes about 51% of South America's population, Portuguese is the most widely spoken language in South America and it is also one of the key languages in Africa.

The language was spread worldwide in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as Portugal created the first and the longest lived modern-world colonial and commercial empire (1415–1975), spanning from Brazil in the Americas to Macao in China. As a result, Portuguese is now the official language of several independent countries and is widely spoken or studied as a second language in many others. There are also various Portuguese Creole languages spread all over the world. It is an important minority language in Andorra, Luxembourg, Namibia, and Paraguay.

The Portuguese language is nicknamed A língua de Camões ("The language of Camões", after Luís de Camões, the author of The Lusiads); A última flor do Lácio ("The last flower of Latium", by Olavo Bilac) or The sweet language (by Cervantes). Portuguese language speakers are known as a Lusophone, after the Roman name for the province of Lusitania".

[edumelo]

I agree with Elba, when you say Spanish and Portuguese have the same rythm, because of this we can understand each other speaking different languages.

Well, Dixie is right, both Portuguese and Spanish as well as Italian and French have Latin root. But I can't understand Italian and French so good as I can understand Spanish. As Elba said, I think it happens because of Historical motives.

[MissLT]

So basically, the whole population in South America continent could kinda understand each other since Spanish and Portuguese are two most spoken languages, right? That is so cool.

[shokin]

Let me read again all this story. It is too much for my small head.

Quales son los gruppos de muscia latina los mejores ? yo quiero conocer más de la musica latina, per favor.

Sorry, I don't know portuguese.

Shokin